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I have a Windows Server, in which the on-board SATA controller is broken and the machine can not identify any of the connected disks.

To overcome the issue I am thinking of buying PCI-E SATA Controller and connect all the available disk devices on it.

Will this controller be equivalent as the board controller. In short terms will I be able to boot without any issue my machine from a disk connected on the PCI-E controller? Do I need to re-install the OS (Windows Server) or it will work as is?

To avoid any confusion, the machine I am talking about is not a rackable server or a blade server, but is more or less a high-end 'desktop' machine that is used as a server.

Update 19.06.2015

I just installed the PCI-E SATA Controller and everything runs smoothly, no additional configurations of re-installations where needed.

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  • The on-board SATA controller is "broken", yet the rest of the motherboard is 100% intact and functional? Sounds unlikely.
    – Hyppy
    Jun 8, 2015 at 19:45
  • Yeap! the rest of the motherboard seems ok. I was running for almost a day several benchmarks, using an IDE disk. Strange indeed.
    – Athafoud
    Jun 8, 2015 at 19:49
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    You might want to consider a new machine. Anything that's got failing hardware might also fail and give you no end of trouble, costing more in time and money in the longer term. If it's just for testing with very light usage then go right ahead and use it.
    – hookenz
    Jun 8, 2015 at 19:56

1 Answer 1

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Will this controller be equivalent as the board controller

Yes.

In short terms will I be able to boot without any issue my machine from a disk connected on the PCI-E controller?

You should be ok yes, no promises because of potential disk controller incompatibilities but often this will work.

Do I need to re-install the OS (Windows Server) or it will work as is?

No way of knowing up front, not without a lot more details anyway, give it a try anyway.

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  • What those 'details' could be? Since it is a company server I need to know up front or at least to estimate, the time needed for fixing the issue. Since all the back-up snapshot are based on the 'old' configuration, installing everything from the scratch will take a lot of time.
    – Athafoud
    Jun 8, 2015 at 19:39
  • EXACT details of the current controller and disk config and then the proposed new controller details too please
    – Chopper3
    Jun 8, 2015 at 20:02

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